Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The P2P OS project aims at creating an open-source Peer-to-Peer Network Operating System that will enable users to communicate and share with each other without relying on any centralized infrastructure and/or service provider.

A top-level technical overview
From a technical perspective, the core of P2P OS will consist of a P2P Application Server that will implement an open-spec peer-to-peer communication API, thus enabling P2P OS-based applications to seamlessly connect with each other inside a transparently-managed P2P network.

for example, a P2P Messenger text-only application will be able to simply request to the underlying P2P operating system to connect to [a copy of itself running on] a remote user's computer, and then send and receive messages without dealing with any of the P2P network connection details:

additionally, a P2P application running on a user's computer will be able to start other "helper applications" on said computer, and thus it may both extend its own functionality via plug-ins, or it may even become a service provider (i.e. a server) for other, totally distinct, third-party applications

for example, the above-mentioned text-based chat application can start, and fully control the operation of, a voice/video chat plug-in (which is itself a separate application), thus effectively integrating peer-to-peer voice/video chat functionality in the original (text-only) chat application:

The peer-to-peer application server module will be the first OS component to be developed, while additional kernel and userland components will be added at a later stage, with the end goal of supplying P2P OS with a comprehensive set of system management functions in areas such as the management of distributed resources, task control, creation and management of peer-to-peer overlay networks, system monitoring and diagnosis tools, etc.

P2P OS will be initially developed on the Windows platform with Windows-specific development tools, but should the project reach a stage where it becomes usable it will be ported to Nokia'sQt framework on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and MeeGo. Additionally, P2P OS will also be ported to all the mobile operating systems for which Qt support will be available, with a primary candidate being the Android OS when/if Qt support for Android will become adequate.

A few words on the business potential
Currently there are several peer-to-peer products on the market that share some common design elements with P2P OS (e.g. Yahoo messenger, Skype, Google talk, and various file sharing applications, all use some form of peer-to-peer communication), but all these products are a far cry from P2P OS in terms of both their technological foundation and their objectives: more specifically, all said products except for Skype are not pure peer-to-peer applications in that they rely on some form of centralized resources - i.e. they have the fundamental problem of requiring continuous and substantial financial backing, none of them is intended as a foundation platform for third-party applications, and none of them is open-source software. Given the above, a number of distinctive business models can be thought of which can add a business component to P2P OS, all without compromising its quintessential free public service role (i'll write a mode detailed post on this topic sometime in the coming weeks).

Support this project

If you consider this project interesting/meaningful/valuable in any way, please help spread the word to as many people you can, may they be software developers, potential sponsors and/or angel investors interested in supporting free software, or just about any other people you think might be willing to further spread the word to their own circle(s) of friends and colleagues.